Saturday, November 24, 2012

Temple Food

Food food food. Pancakes for breakfast followed by a much-postponed and enjoyable lunch with our landlords in a nearby Mongolian restaurant - a first I think. Lots of mutton with cumin, cold glutinous rice with what looked like yellow lentils on top (but was apparently millet), beef pasties and potato noodles in broth. Wondered whether the girls would like it but they tucked in.And then a work dinner at Temple Restaurant, out in hutong-land. It used to be a - you guessed it - temple, then a small factory producing China's first B&W TV sets, and now a very nice restaurant. My Education colleagues have been running a big, nationwide design competition and the dinner was the culmination. The guests included the comp's five judges, all of whom, coincidentally, I knew from some time ago. So very nice to catch up again with graphic designer Michael Johnson, Donna Loveday of the Design Museum, Tony Dunne of the Royal College of Art, Catherine McDermott, Head of Design at Kingston University, and the Science Museum's Creative Director, Tim Molloy with his stripey shirt and big plastic-but-probably-very-expensive specs. Also there was the young fashion designer Henry Holland with his gravity-defying quiff.